


Apricots and Heating Pads

by summerartist



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Chronic Pain, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, brief flashback of ten/rose, joint pain, sacroiliitis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23028223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerartist/pseuds/summerartist
Summary: The Doctor’s body sometimes comes out of regeneration slightly malformed. Or, Ten’s bones are a little wonky and Donna helps him manage the pain.(purely h/c)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 53





	Apricots and Heating Pads

**Author's Note:**

> I know that this fic isn’t up to my usual specs, but I didn’t have many to begin with. XD  
> It’s probably time to go back to painting.

* * *

Flitting about through time and space was a distracting business. It was easy to ignore how his legs would cramp up if he ran too long, or how some days he needed to rest awhile. He had initially thought it was a side effect from the regeneration and that his body was still reforming, then, he happened to take an x-ray of himself.

“Oh,” he pondered aloud. “Well, that explains that.”

* * *

He didn’t want to take a strong pain killer today. His liver would hardly thank him for it, and even with his supreme biology he wasn’t inclined to resort to that quite yet. Donna was expecting to go somewhere today after their brief period of rest, and he needed something to help tide him over.

  
The Tardis brushed across his mind to help strengthen his resolve. The Doctor gritted his teeth and slipped out of bed. He gasped when the minute shift of his hips drove spikes of agony up his thighs.

“Come on,” he growled at himself.

He could sense the Tardis shifting and reforming so that the infirmary was a few steps away, creating some drastic differences in the Tardis layout. Two rec rooms were promptly swallowed up and would later need to be restarted from scratch. He sent warmth the Tardis’s way and she returned some of her own. She waited on the fringes of his mind as he attempted to take two small steps. His sounds were quiet, but he knew that every noise was being gauged by his ship to detect his level of difficulty.

“Stop it,” he admonished her as he slid one foot forward. “I can make it. If I can just-” He hissed and cringed.

Maybe if he stepped very slowly and carefully forward, he could inch towards his goal. Walking was taking so blasted long today. Almost imperceptibly, he felt the Tardis’s focus trickle away.

“No no no, don’t you dare.”

She reminded him gruffly that he hardly had a choice. He blared all of his annoyance at her. She continued to ignore him as she did what she was biologically programmed to do.

The Doctor stepped more quickly towards the infirmary and threw the doors open. It was lucky that he had decided to dress in a full set of pajamas today, as he sometimes merely tossed a few layers of clothing off before rest. Having shoes would have been nice though.

The Tardis lit the medical bay for him. He shuffled straight towards the shelving in the back of the room. It was beginning to occur to him that he might not manage to complete his journey. He paused, getting his breath back as his hips shifted. He eyed an exam bed to his right that he could possibly sit on.

“Doctor?”

Donna was rubbing her eyes and yawning. She was wearing a pair of fuzzy slippers in addition to a bathrobe thrown over her pajamas. Her hair was a fiery red tangle.

“Did she wake you up?” The Doctor asked her grimly.

“No, I was already awake. What’s going on?” Donna’s gaze was already flitting between their surroundings and the oddly still Doctor.

The Doctor sighed. He could very easily make up an excuse for his behavior and had about an 87% chance of being able to think up something that could send Donna away. He had a whole range of excuses if he started claiming alien interference. But it was early, and he was tired and in more than a little discomfort. His designated sleeping hours had been too disturbed, even for a Time Lord.

“Needed a mild painkiller from the medicine cabinet. It’s the Time Lord equivalent of paracetamol, generally for headaches and sore muscles,” he told her evenly.

“You’re sore?” She asked groggily, unknowingly latching onto that last description.

“A bit.” He shrugged.

Donna looked nonplussed. “Well, go get your not-paracetamol then.”

The Doctor grimaced, eyeing the distance between his feet and the cabinet. “Yeah, could you fetch it for me?”

He knew instantly that this was going to backfire on him. He couldn’t tell Donna to “fetch” anything for him, especially not while using that word.

“Why?” She asked stiffly.

Again, he shrugged. Then he winced.

“Did you sleep at a funny angle or something?”

“You could say that. I’m really sore,” the Doctor mumbled.

Donna sighed and approached the medicine cabinet. “Which shelf?”

“Top left,” he told her, a little surprised at her compliance. “It has...the swirls on the label.”

Donna made a noise and approached, opening the bottle for him. “I know what Gallifreyan is, you chump.”

He accepted the bottle from her and dumped a couple of pills out. He swallowed them dry.

“Right, that’s all solved. Why did the Tardis send for me?” Donna said briskly.

“I dunno,” he murmured.

“She said to help you, but I’ve already done that. She made it sound like it was something urgent,” Donna puzzled out.

“Well, everything’s all set.”

“Yeah,” Donna said, studying him. “She’s normally pretty straightforward.”

The Doctor suppressed the urge to rub at the back of his neck as he withstood her scrutiny. It was silly, as there was no need to conceal this in front of her species. If she had been a Time Lord...well, they wouldn’t even be having this conversation.

“Doctor, why did the Tardis call me?” She repeated.

“Must have been a misunderstanding. -Ah.” He had attempted to move his left foot, which sent pain zinging through his nerves. “I’m actually really very sore,” he conceded.

What followed were a couple of minutes of awkward shuffling, concerned questions, and agitated grumbling.

“I’m alright,” he assured her as he slid himself onto a bed. After his assortment of pained and undignified noises, the words seemed to do little to impress her.

“That’s more than sore,” Donna told him, hands on her hips. “Where are you hurt?”

“I’m not- this isn’t something that can be solved easily.”

“What is it then?” Donna was growing louder with her impending frustration.

The Doctor decided to tell her. “Sacroiliitis.”

“What?”

“Sacroiliitis, inflammation of the sacriliac joints. It’s somewhat painful,” he said.

“How can I help?” Donna asked.

“You can’t,” he told her softly. “My joints are out of alignment. I have asymmetrical bones, namely my pelvis. I’ve had it for a while now.”

“Asymmetrical, but that means...” Donna ceased speaking and instead regarded him with sympathy. He saw her gradual realization that his superior Time Lord biology wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

“I think I’ll sit here for a while. Thanks for all your help,” he said dismissively.

He gave a dry sniff and pulled one of the medical bay screens towards him. He started tapping away at it, navigating through menus of more of his language.

“So you’re sore,” Donna said hesitantly.

She didn’t wait for the Doctor to acknowledge her, and instead started digging through the infirmary cabinets. She continued muttering to herself in a way that was not unlike the Doctor. The Doctor found a thick piece of fluffy cloth being shoved under his typing hand.

  
  
“Too hot?” Donna asked.

“What?”

Then the thick cloth was being draped across his hips. He looked down at it and then gazed back up at her.

“The Tardis would help me find this whenever I had period cramps, before my body adapted to the medication on board. You should put that where it hurts.”

He looked at her like he had never seen her before in his life. Very hesitantly, he drew the cloth towards his back. He arranged it to cover his left hip and lower back. His eyes widened as he stared at her.

“I sometimes know what I’m doing,” Donna said in an admonishing tone.

The heating pad was set at a low temperature in anticipation of his cooler core. It sent numbing warmth through his frozen joints and muscles. The sharp pains gradually eased into a dull throb. His rigid posture slumped. In a few minutes, he should be able to move around with relatively little pain.

“Donna Noble, you are brilliant.”

“ _Can’t you move?” Rose asked. “What’s wrong?”_

_He gave a stuttering response about having pulled a muscle. He moved his hands across his lower back as he felt around for the origin of his discomfort. His back felt a little lumpy in a way that it shouldn’t have been._

“ _Would you like a massage?”_

_He let her gentle hands tease the tautness out of his muscles. He had felt a little better after the treatment, but still sore. She had worked his muscles diligently and payed keen attention to his wincing reactions. Even his thighs had been tender under her ministrations. He assured her that she was doing brilliantly, and made certain to sandwich a lot of “wonderful’s” and “molto bene’s” into his compliments. Still, the encounter had left him a little puzzled in regards to his reactions._   
  
_After his diagnosis and Rose’s absence, he briefly considered having corrective surgery. There were a few places across the universe that specialized in that sort of thing, but it would take months, possibly years to heal. By then he might have moved on to a new body._

“Did you need something else?”

“Nah,” he mumbled.

“Nothing? Nothing at all?” Donna asked openly.

“Well...” He looked at her, gaze seeming far away for a moment. “...apricots.”

“Apricots?”

“They’re rich in beta-cryptoxanthin and magnesium, good for pain and arthritis. They're beneficial for humans too.”

Donna rolled her eyes at him but huffed fondly. The Doctor made to stand up in a move that presumably preluded getting them, but he quickly groaned and sat back down. Donna admonished him and seemed to relish in the act.

After some griping, Donna brought them dried apricots and they talked for a couple of hours about their latest adventures. It seemed to relax the Doctor enough to lay languidly down on the exam bed. He tucked the heating pad unashamedly over his bum and thighs, letting it numb his crooked pelvis. They discussed future trips, not letting their present circumstances impact their choices. Though the Doctor suggested going somewhere to swim at some point.

Everything was put on hold by unspoken agreement. Instead, the Doctor spent this time uninterrupted with his friend, eating sticky orange fruit and occasionally laughing. It turned out to be a tranquil day.

The End.


End file.
